A class exploration of the effects on individuals and societies of the use and abuse of power

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Abraham Lincoln’s power was not given to him but was earned and deserved. He was the 16th President of the United States, serving from 1861-1865. The certain power that Lincoln had was obviously control over the whole of the United States and America. He was raised in a poor family and was mostly self-educated. He became a country lawyer, an Illinois state legislator, and a one-term member of the United States House of Representatives. He was an affectionate, though often absent, husband and father of four children.

Lincoln also led America through the Great American Civil War, concentrating on the military and political strategies.

Abraham Lincoln gained his power when he became president and used that power for the freedom of many people. Throughout his leadership, Lincoln managed to control and overcome slavery in America and also planned thoroughly for the war and how to outsmart his fellow countrymen. The war began on April 12 1861 – a year after Lincoln was elected into presidency – and ended April 9 1865. Six days later Abraham Lincoln was shot at point blank range mortally wounding him. After laying in a coma for nine hours, Lincoln died.

There were lots of things that Abraham used his power for such as slavery, freedom and the civil war. Slavery had been a big part of America, as a large majority of other countries at that time, and was becoming more and more inhuman. On October 16, 1854, in his “Peoria Speech”, Lincoln declared his opposition to slavery, which he repeated en route to the presidency. Speaking with a very powerful voice,he said the Kansas Act had a “declared indifference, but as I must think, a covert real zeal for the spread of slavery. I cannot but hate it. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world…”

Abraham Lincoln did not show any signs of being corrupt as president. He helped thousands of people out of slavery and into freedom and tried his best not to start the American Civil War as much as possible. He wasn’t self-centred at all, always looking out for and considering others before himself, and came from a very trying and humble background.

Overall, Lincoln was a good person and president (possibly one of the most known and acknowledged), and made a reasonably positive impact towards society. Although there were people, like the Unions, who opposed what he thought and decided to take matters into their own hands, such as John Wilkes Booth, the man who managed to assassinate him. Lincoln tried to help as many American citizens as was humanly possible as he could. Abraham Lincoln was able to ‘Unite’ the “United States of America”. I would classify Lincoln as a ‘Good’ person because of everything he did and stood for.

Lincoln has been memorialized in many town, city, and county names,including the capital of Nebraska. The first public monument to Abraham Lincoln was a statue erected in front of the District of Columbia City Hall in 1868, three years after his assassination. Lincoln’s name and image appear in numerous other places, such as the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. and Lincoln’s sculpture on Mount Rushmore.